


Cards on the Table

by riseuplikeangels



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Fluff, M/M, cosette is 2smart, enjolras is a loser, marius is a dork
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-30
Updated: 2015-10-30
Packaged: 2018-04-28 21:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5106002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/riseuplikeangels/pseuds/riseuplikeangels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Marius doesn’t usually go around asking people how they lost their virginity, but if asked, he would hazard a guess that it wouldn’t end like this."</p>
<p>When Marius moves in with Courfeyrac, it's supposed to be a temporary arrangement. Then again, Marius is also supposed to be 100% heterosexual, and that's not going so well, either.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cards on the Table

**Author's Note:**

  * For [goddamnshinyrock (micaceous)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/micaceous/gifts).



> This is a pinch-hit for the Les Mis Halloween Fic exchange, feat. the World's Fastest Editing Job, so I hope everything's okay! Please forgive anything I might have missed.

In a cliché turn of events, it’s been raining when Marius shows up on Courfeyrac’s doorstep, late one Thursday night. He’s standing outside his apartment building, trying to figure out what to say in a phone call. Some other resident of the building buzzes herself in, though, and Marius catches the door before it closes. He drags his three duffel bags into the lobby and then to the elevator.

That buys him more time to figure out how he’s going to explain the situation to Courfeyrac. More time, however, does not mean enough time, and when the curly-haired young man opens the door, Marius just blurts out something he’d intended to bring up at least a little casually.

“My grandfather kicked me out,” is what he says, and Courfeyrac’s eyes widen.

“Your... _what?”_

Ten minutes later, Marius is installed on Courfeyrac’s futon couch with a steaming mug of black tea in his hands and a throw blanket wrapped round his shoulders. Courfeyrac is looking very serious for someone who is wearing cupcake pajama pants, and Marius is looking very untroubled for someone who has just been kicked out of their home.

“It was politics, plain and simple,” he explains, after letting the tea put some liquid warmth in his stomach and unscramble his brain a little. “And for a while we coexisted okay, but he just kept picking fights. After I came home from the rally for Black Lives Matter, with pictures on my Facebook of me and the rest of les Amis waving signs and standing up in solidarity, etc. etc...well, that was probably the worst fight that we’ve ever had. He didn’t kick me out right then, though. It was this afternoon--he just told me that he’d had enough, and that he wanted me out from under his roof.”

Once the words start, they come in a nonstop logorrhea, leaving no room for Courfeyrac to comment. “And I looked into getting housing at the law school, but they said that it would take up to eight weeks to process, and then I tried going to a hotel but realized almost immediately that it wouldn’t be sustainable, and I didn’t know what to do so I just came here, I just...”

Courf leans over and puts a hand on Marius’s arm, a tender smile on his mouth. “It’s okay,” he says. “I don’t mind. Really.”

Marius, when he’s exhausted from talking and worrying, sleeps on the futon, curled up tight under the same throw blanket like he’s afraid he’s taking up too much space. Courfeyrac puts the coffee on for the next morning, turns off the light, and goes into his own bedroom.

* * *

 

The living arrangement is originally intended to be a temporary one. Marius says weekly that he’s going to try to get a place of his own, picking up more hours from his job at the university campus translating works in the library to save some extra money. Yet nearly three months after that first night, he’s still there, sleeping on Courfeyrac’s futon, his clothes folded neatly into a few plastic containers that Courfeyrac lets him keep underneath the coffee table.

It’s not, of course, a replacement for having a space that’s truly one’s own, but it is a thousand times better than being homeless, or living with someone who despises you.

Courfeyrac definitely doesn’t despise him, that much is clear from the beginning. He’s ineffably kind--he makes Marius breakfast in the mornings before they both have to go and study law all day long, brings him coffee when he looks like he needs it, is constantly fussing about how much sleep Marius is getting.

Marius is initially ashamed of how out of his way Courfeyrac is going to make sure that he’s comfortable and taken care of, since he’s practically taking advantage of him by leeching his couch space. He initially tries to demur all of Courf’s help, but realizes soon enough that it upsets Courfeyrac more to _not_ do it.

So they settle into a routine, and it’s a nice one. Courfeyrac gets up first because he is very much a morning person, makes coffee and breakfast (sometimes toast, sometimes omelets, sometimes pancakes if he wakes up craving sugar). Marius gets up half an hour later, right around the time where breakfast is ready, and sets the table. Both of them are usually on their laptops reading case summaries or other documents they need to catch up on. After breakfast, they pack up their things and head out for the day. On Mondays and Wednesdays, they have their first class together (which is how they met), so they take the train to campus together. On Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays, they have separate internships to go to, so they walk to the station and then part ways.

After that, it depends on the workload whether or not they meet for dinner, but more often than not, they end up at some place on campus over plates of pasta or sandwiches. Then, of course, they have Les Amis meetings, which Marius is beginning to come to more and more after an initial rocky start with the group.

And then on the nights when they come back together, they tangle back on the couch without a whole lot of words exchanged, just resting against each other, feeling the heat of each other’s bodies. Marius’s head fits well against Courf’s shoulder. These ineffable little moments are never discussed and rarely go on for too long...but _God,_ are they nice.

It’s a good life. Much better than one that involves a lot of dancing around Marius’s grandfather, or else getting into full-fledged shouting matches with him when evasive maneuvers fail.

On a rainy Wednesday, they are getting coffee after a particularly draining lecture. They’re talking about whether or not the professor realized that he was wearing one black and one navy shoe (and if he did realize, what was the statement behind it?) when Marius suddenly looks off into the distance, and his face transforms as though he’s stuck his finger in the electrical outlet by their table.

“What?” Courfeyrac says, and and turns to see what Marius is looking at.

By the time Courfeyrac lays eyes on the girl, Marius has already fallen for her.

* * *

“This _sucks,_ ” Courf groans. His head is on Combeferre’s lap, and his legs are on Enjolras’s lap. Ferre, ever the sympathetic one, is gently stroking his hair, whereas Enjolras is methodically unlacing and re-lacing Courf’s boots.

“You’ve only said that about a hundred times,” Enjolras points out, tying a double knot only to immediately unravel it.

“Yes, because it _does.”_ Courfeyrac throws a hand over his eyes, never one to resist a bit of melodrama, even when genuinely distressed. “Woe is me, for the one I love truly loves another.”

For though Courfeyrac is a very kind person in general, there’s a reason why he’s essentially bending over backwards to make sure that Marius is safe and happy. A reason that literally all of his friends (save, of course, for Marius himself) guessed before he himself became aware of it. The reason, of course, being that he’s got a _huge fucking crush on him._

This is something that had taken him a long while to realize, and an even longer time to admit to himself, and then another week before he mustered up the courage to tell Enjolras and Combeferre about it.

“ _Obviously,_ ” had been the unison response.

Courfeyrac is just glad that Marius is completely oblivious. Because it seems like literally all of his friends are in on the news.

Combeferre uses the hand that’s not in Courfeyrac’s hair to push his glasses up further on his nose. “Well, I mean. Do we really know how much is going to come of it? I mean, he’s pretty much a startled deer. He thought her name was Ursula for, like, a month and a half because he thought the monogrammed keychain that he found was something that she dropped.”

Another long, low groan. “No, you don’t understand,” Courfeyrac says in despair. “I _helped_ him. I told him to go talk to her when we saw her in a café one afternoon. I physically pushed him over there. And now they’re going out on a date on Saturday night, and it’s all my doing and why am I so fucking _nice?_ Can’t I just be selfish for once?”

“Humble words,” Enjolras remarks drily, but he’s smiling. Courfeyrac shoots him a look of anguish. “Alright, alright. We get it. It’s a sticky situation. You want him to be happy, but mostly you want him to be happy with you.”

_“Exactly.”_

Enjolras ties his bootlaces together.

* * *

The worst part of all of it, Courfeyrac reflects, is that he genuinely _likes_ Cosette. She comes by the apartment frequently (which Courfeyrac had told her that she was more than welcome to do), sometimes just to do her own coursework, sometimes to stay for dinner, sometimes just on her way to pick Marius up for one of their ridiculously adorable dates.  

The girl is down-to-earth, witty as hell, one of the kindest souls Courf’s ever met. When Marius brings her to one of the Amis meetings, even Enjolras likes her, and he usually doesn’t warm up to people so quickly. There’s really no getting around the fact that she’s a truly remarkable woman, or the fact that she likes Marius.

The two of them have been going out for nearly two months now, pretty frequently--Cosette likes adventure and takes Marius to all sorts of odd corners of the city. Concerts one night, thrift markets another. Marius waxes eloquent about their dates all the time, when he and Courfeyrac are eating breakfast together, or take the train to class together.

They’re both getting ready to go out on a date right at this very moment, and Courfeyrac is trying his hardest not to feel like his heart is being ripped out of his chest, sitting at the kitchen table with a thick book and a hot cup of coffee. Cosette is putting on makeup in the hall mirror with a careful hand, Marius is buttoning up a shirt that he’s retrieved from his makeshift wardrobe.

“Where are you two lovebirds going?” Courfeyrac says, and his voice has its usual cheer. Not a note of bitterness. Impressive.

“Out for dinner, a little pop-up place on Rue de Rivoli that looked good,” Cosette answers, daubing mascara carefully on her lashes, blinking against the want. “Then, who knows? An adventure. I’ll try not to keep him out all night.” She winks, and Courfeyrac feels amusement and despair in equal measure.

“Wouldn’t want to worry you,” Marius says, grinning, and he puts a hand on Courfeyrac’s shoulder, squeezing just a bit before letting it slide off. Courf is again struck with the degree that the universe tests him.

When they walk out the door, he lets out a long, long sigh, fingers pressed to his temples for a moment before turning back to his reading and his coffee.

* * *

Marius doesn’t usually go around asking people how they lost their virginity, but if asked, he would hazard a guess that it wouldn’t end like this.

To begin with, if one defines virginity in the antiquated sense of penetrative sex, this doesn’t even _count_ because it didn’t actually get there. Instead of in orgasm, it had ended where it is now.

Cosette is leaning up against the headboard of her bed, bare back against the white paint. She’s only wearing her pink underwear, which she had pulled back on after the unsuccessful encounter. Marius, in kind, has put his briefs back on. Her hand is on his shoulder--his head is in her hands.

“Look, people have trouble like this all the time,” she says, and her voice is so kind and intimate. Marius manages, through his haze of despair, to still wonder at the fact that she deigns to speak with him at all. “Let’s just...I mean, call me crazy, but I think there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all of this.”

“God, I’d love to hear it,” Marius says bitterly. “About to sleep with the most beautiful girl I’ve ever met and I can’t even...” He reddens. “You know.”

“Yes, love, I know.” She rubs his bare shoulder a little, pastel-manicured nails sliding over his skin. “I mean...well. I’m not exactly sure how to say it without sounding insensitive. And besides, it’s just a hunch.” He’s silent, so she goes on. “Prefacing this with the fact that I don’t know your identity, I feel like there might be just a teensy possibility that you might not be _totally_ attracted to me.”

“What? I mean...of course I’m attracted to you,” Marius says, brow furrowed. “I think you’re gorgeous.”

“Yes, but just because you think I’m _pretty_ doesn’t mean that you want to _fuck_ me or _date_ me,” she responds. “Don’t get me wrong, I love hanging out with you, but it really doesn’t feel much like a date when we do it.”

“Oh,” Marius says. “I...wouldn’t know much about that. I’m not exactly the most experienced.” He’s thinking about what she’s saying, and it’s rather like struggling through cotton, but things feel like they’re falling into place.

Cosette shrugs. She pulls the duvet up over her bare body--it’s a bit cool in the room to just be sitting there nude. “I don’t mind. I’m just as happy hanging out with you platonically as I am dating you. Besides...look, don’t take this the wrong way...well, I don’t know. I don’t want to put things in your head.”

Marius snorts. “Clearly I don’t know much of anything about my own head, so it might be useful for you to try and fill in.”

She laughs, that sweet laugh that he finds so comforting. “I don’t know. I just notice that you’re awfully close to Courfeyrac.”

At the mention of the name, Marius can feel his cheeks heat up. “Oh,” he says, and Cosette shrugs again.

“Like I said. I only observe, not dictate. Want to sleep here? I don’t mind.”

And just like that, they’re comfortable again. Marius’s mind is whirling, of course, as anyone’s would be if it’s just been gently suggested to them that they might not be as heterosexual as originally intended. But Cosette just goes to her closet and pulls on a big sleep shirt, and goes back to the bed, giving him a gentle hug.

“Don’t think you’re going to get away from me that easily, though,” she tells him, tapping him on the nose. “I still expect your cute self to hang out with me.”

And despite everything, Marius laughs.

“Of course,” he says, and they get into bed together.

* * *

When Marius doesn’t come back at eleven or midnight or one o’clock in the morning, a sick sort of sadness settles round Courfeyrac’s midriff that he can do absolutely nothing about. He’s finished his readings, he’s finished a novel, and still Marius isn’t here.

The natural conclusion to draw is that he’s spending the night at Cosette’s--either that, or he’s dead in a ditch somewhere, and either answer is undesirable. Courfeyrac’s general ugly mix of feelings were kept at bay by the complicated text of his readings, but there’s nothing left to distract and the full gravity of the situation hits him.

So, instead of trying to tangle through it again, he just goes to bed.

When he wakes up, Marius still isn’t there. It strikes Courfeyrac that this is the first night since he turned up on his threshold that his favorite nerd hasn’t occupied his futon. It’s the first morning that he’s had breakfast alone, and only poured one cup of coffee. God, you’re being pathetic, he says in his mind as he’s sitting down, but lets himself sit in the quiet misery for a long moment, allowing himself a moment of wallowing before pulling back from it. He’s strong. He can deal.

The door opens. Courfeyrac almost falls out of his chair.

Marius comes in, wearing the same clothes as the night before, his hair wet from a shower. He looks at Courfeyrac with his trademark wide, deer-startled eyes.

“Um. Hi,” he says, shifting from foot to foot, putting his bag down by the coat rack.

“Hey,” Courfeyrac says, unable to resist giving him shit even though it hurts. So he’s grinning, devilish and suggestive. “Fun night?”

“I mean, yes, but...oh, God, Courf, not like _that!”_ Marius pulls a face of disgust, and Courfeyrac laughs.

“Just checking. I mean, you understand how the situation looks.”

“I hate you,” Marius mutters, but then Courfeyrac hands him a cup of coffee, which he’s gotten up and poured while Marius was spluttering. “Thanks,” he says, looking up at him. “Look, I...I feel like we should talk about something.”

“About what?” Keep your cool, Courf.

“Just something that Cosette said that I think...well, admittedly I haven’t had all that much time to think about it. But I can’t get it out of my head, so I um, I figured that I should let you know about it, especially because it’s kind of relevant and I just, I mean, um...”

Courfeyrac puts a hand on his shoulder, and Marius starts. “Breathe,” he says. “It’s just me, yeah?”

So they go and sit on the couch together, knees turned so that they’re facing each other, and Marius begins to re-spin the tale of the night before. He can’t get through the summary of the failed sexual encounter without a lot of blushing and euphemisms, which honestly Courfeyrac should not find so utterly adorable. And then he starts recounting the conversation that Cosette had had with him, about aesthetic vs. romantic attraction.

“Smart girl, that Cosette,” Courfeyrac comments offhand.

Marius huffs out a laugh and nods. “That she is. So anyway, um, she said that and it made a lot of sense. And then she said something else, and that makes a lot less sense but I feel like...I don’t know. I don’t know what I feel like.” He takes a deep breath, and then looks Courfeyrac right in the eye. “She suggested that I might harbor some...uh, less than platonic feelings from you. I mean...I thought that everyone did that stuff, with the couches and the dinners out and stuff, just like...as friends, and I thought everyone found their male friends attractive? I don’t...I mean, tell me if this sounds crazy, and tell me if you’re totally creeped out right now because if you are I’ll just drop it right now, you’ve been so kind and lovely to me that I wouldn’t want to screw anything up now....”

The reality is that Courfeyrac is trying to remember how to string words together in a coherent sentence, given that Marius has just told him that he finds him attractive and that there is a real possibility that their feelings for each other are _“more than platonic.”_ “Hey, hey,” he says, once he remembers how language works. “I’m not creeped out, okay? Seriously.”

Marius lets out a deep breath. “Okay, good, because I didn’t...I mean, I wouldn’t want to do that.”

“And,” Courfeyrac continues. “Since you just put your cards on the table, I guess it’s about time that I should do the same. This isn’t...I mean, obviously you’re still working through stuff and that’s fine and I’ll wait for as long as you need me to. But if we’re being real here, I’ve kind of been infatuated with you from, like, the first day we met?”

He is, once again, reminded of Marius’s uncanny resemblance to a deer.

“You...really?!” Monsieur Pontmercy’s voice comes out quite a bit higher than usual.

Courfeyrac lets out a breath. No taking it back now. Having the words out there in the air is cathartic, though also terrifying. “Yep,” he says simply, and closes his eyes to try to process the whole thing. But then they immediately fly open, because _Jesus Christ,_ Marius Pontmercy is kissing him, and it’s just as awkward as he had imagined it might be but it’s _fantastic._

He breaks away almost immediately. “Oh my God I am so sorry, I just...wanted to try that, oh God that sounds back, I mean it just sort of happened and I should have asked first or warned you or something.”

“Marius!” Courfeyrac laughs. “You’re such a dork. I confess my adoration for you and you think I might not want you to kiss me?”

“I just...I don’t know! You might not!”

Courf gently, gently, ever so carefully cups Marius’s smooth cheek, looking at him with a grin playing round his mouth. “Believe me,” he says. “You can kiss me whenever you feel moved to.”

They make eye contact for several lengthy seconds, and when Marius tries to kiss him again, his glasses get knocked askew.

Courfeyrac can barely kiss him back for laughing.

 


End file.
